2021年1-4月 雅思口语 Part 3 Topic 9 精力充沛的人

What kinds of jobs need a lot of physical work?

Among many jobs that would need a lot of physical work, for example you get auto repairing workers, delivery guys, or people working at assembly lines. Among those jobs, I would say construction workers are probably the people who need physical strength the most. Their job is like, requiring a hundred percent physical work, while other jobs are not that intense. Construction workers ^‘ daily life would be all about carrying stuffs around as the instructions, and hammer stuffs together with their bare hands. Those are really hard works.

What’s the difference between the payment for physical work and that for mental work?

Currently, employers tend to pay more for mental work and pay less for physical work. I think the logic behind that is that workers with physical strength are usually easier to find while it might be hard to find mental equivalent for some other jobs. It is assuming that everyone in the job market should be able to take up physically demanding jobs as a healthy human being, but that’s not really true for other mental work positions. So the pool from which employers can hire people is *aller, thus more valuable.

Can physical workers receive higher salaries in the future?

I really don’t know. I actually think the chance of physical workers receiving higher salaries is decreasing as the technology development going fast. Physical works are becoming more and more easier for machines or robots in factories and construction sites. The key here I think is that with the highly developed technology today, physical work is more and more replaceable, which doesn’t really help with their salaries. The more likely a job can be substituted by machines, the less likely people would want to pay more for the job.

Do you think machines could replace human workers in the future?

I do think so. But I mean, that’s why we want machines in the first place, correct? Machines were invented over time as a substitution of sheer human power, and to do an even better job than human. The whole point of having more machines is to release physical workers and push more work force into a higher level of intelligent job market. So will machines replace human workers in the future? Yes. Will machines replace all human workers? No. Because machines are not creative and thoughtful, but human does.